


Like morning dew

by kjadie



Category: The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, POV Achilles (Song of Achilles), POV First Person, this is after patroclus gets raped because my heart hurted too much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 19:23:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20102356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kjadie/pseuds/kjadie
Summary: Our scent was the same, even without perfume. They envied our skin, my gold against his bronze, how good we looked together. We had a marriage for love, they said, as rare as a sunset in the east.aka "Aftercare for my soul."





	Like morning dew

**Author's Note:**

> I felt absolutely crushed and horribly sick after reading chapter 13 and just couldn't believe that Achilles would be down with it. I think Patroclus says "I tried to convince myself it was a vivid dream from my imaginations. But that is not what happened." So, this is what happened. It's mostly aftercare because Patroclus is a precious bean and doesn't deserve to be done dirty

I did not need to open my eyes to know he was with me. His footsteps were slow and drowsy, stirring the earth while I sat under the crags. We had not been together since before dawn; I was restless, and it seemed selfish to wake him early. He set his head on my thigh. Patroclus.

After a while, he spoke.

“What do the other women say of me?” His breath was tighter than usual.

“My tall, mysterious husband. With the dark hair and shining eyes.” I sighed, happy at the thought. “A decent man would not repeat the things they say about you.”

“But you are not a decent man,” he said. I smiled, delighted at the mischief in his eyes. 

“And you are?”

He shoved me for that, and I laughed. I remembered what they said about him, about us. In my time on Skyros, I learned that women could be as vulgar as men. Sometimes more. There was so much I could say, and not just gossip. Our scent was the same, even without perfume. They envied our skin, my gold against his bronze, how good we looked together. We had a marriage for love, they said, as rare as a sunset in the east.

“He steals me away every night and leaves me flushed in the morning. I smile more.” My face warmed. “And I walk differently,” I said with a kind of pride, “So they say.”

We laughed together, though I was louder than him. “Women,” he said.

I knew his face like a map, the ridges of his jawline, the streams of his cheekbones. There was something new, though. A small tear on the edge of his lips, a gash. _ How had I not seen it? _He tensed as I traced my finger over it.

“Who did this?”

“Nobody.” He was obviously lying. He turned away.

There was a color of shame on his cheeks. The sky was cloudless and bright, but his eyes were dark. I could not see my reflection in them.

“Tell me who did this.”

“She was hateful. It was bitter—I did not want it, but I pitied her.”

“_She...?_” Again and again, my eyes traced along the line of skin that had been clawed off by something thin. My nostrils flared like a bull. _ A ring_. “That snake.” 

Her blood would stain the earth for this.

Chiron showed us how to catch snakes, how to snap their necks. It would be easy, I thought.

“Achilles!” His voice was difficult to hear over the drums of blood raging through my ears. I had nearly dashed away but he grabbed me before I could. “Stay with me,” he said. “Please.”

If he had not said that, she would be dead. A corpse, a meal for the dogs and crows. But like the light of a beacon through a raging storm, his grip guided me to back to myself. 

He did not need to say more, he was so familiar to me. The sweat on the ends of his hair, the gleam on his skin, the smell that was not his, “_I__ did not want it_,” I heard him say. I understood. I had never imagined him with a woman before, the sounds he would make, or the look in his eyes. The thought seemed strange. 

Anger surged through my veins. Nothing was hidden between us. I had told him about her. He would tell me this.

“How?”

“She had me brought to her room. She said…” I did not want to think about what she had said. “I could not watch her pain, but I did not like it. She will leave within a day, and we will never see her.”

There was no fight written on his face, only defeat. _ He did not defend himself. _Of course he wouldn’t. Why would he? The time he did, he killed a boy and was exiled for it. It annoyed me when we lived on Pelion. I did most of the hunting; he hated killing even a trapped rabbit. 

No, he would not fight her. What running was to me, kindness was to him. It was his lungs, his heart. And I had not protected him. “I should have been there,” I wanted to say. But self-pity is low drama.

He takes my hands. “I thought of you,” he says.

A shiver runs through me.  _ He thought of me. _ His words stroke my heart. But before I can smile, that glimmer of pride flees from my own selfishness in this moment. What have I done? I do not know this feeling. I search for an answer in his eyes. They are still soft and dark, but most of the pain is gone. Now, I can see the blurred outline of my face.

There was a story that Chiron had told us. He would often talk of the men who came before me: the hunter Orion, the feats of Heracles, Perseus and Andromeda. There was Narcissus, who knelt beside a lake and became entranced by his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that he withered away into the golden flower. I had not expected Chiron to say more.

He said that after Narcissus died, the forest nymphs appeared at the lake. Once, its waters were fresh and pure, glimmering with fish. But when the nymphs found it, all the life had died with the man who could only love vanity. The water in the lake was salty with tears.

The nymphs asked, “Why do you weep?”

“I weep for Narcissus,” the lake replied.

“That is no surprise,” they said. “We always pursued him in the forest, until he turned us away. You alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand.”

“But…was Narcissus beautiful?” the lake asked.

Chiron paused. He must have seen the confusion on my face. “How could the lake not know? Nobody could have seen him better.”

He continued. The lake was silent for some time, but answered:

“I am weeping for Narcissus, but I never noticed that he was beautiful. When he knelt on my lush banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.”

I think of the lake, staring. My own reflection is clear and sharp. Do I also stare at myself, looking through his eyes at my own beauty? Is this why I love him? Do I caress myself and fulfill Narcissus’ theme once again? Or do I redeem him?

I feel his hands, the hands I’ve over and over given myself to. No, this is not why I love him. If his eyes are my mirror, I am beautiful because of him. But there are no words large enough to say this truth. Just one.

“Patroclus.”

I kiss him, and I relish the taste that is his alone. He had not kissed her, not once. She stole his scent but she did not take his lips, his tongue. I press my nose to his. “I thought of you as well. Come.” I stand and help him to his feet, his body is still dazed. “Let me wash you.”

There is a river nearby, below the crags on the westside of Skyros. The water meets the sun’s rays at the surface, always clear and bright. We sit on the rocks together, where the river is shallow. I soak his hair first, brushing my wet hands through it. Here, just behind his ear, the part that’s never quite straight, it sticks up, even if his hair is wet. I love it. But when I touch his neck, he starts to shake. 

“I just need to rest,” he says.

I watch the water bead down his shoulders and hope that his pain will wash into the river, along with the scent of a girl we would never see again. Far away from us, deep into the ocean depths, lost and forgotten. I wonder, what could I do to bring him back to me? I miss his smile.

“When I say your name, your breath stops for a moment. Have I told you that?”

“No, you haven’t.”

“I should have.”

We look at the fish under the small waves, I point at a few of the big ones. Time is slow in these moments, when I hold him in my arms, in this gentle silence. Like morning dew, his trembling fades. I slide my hand lightly over his chest, the line I like to draw my finger down.

“I like how you say my name. You always say it with pride. And dignity, I think.”

“Not always.” I kiss his neck, slow and gentle. “But that is hardly my fault.”

He laughs at this, and the world is brighter.

**Author's Note:**

> The Narcissus story is a reference to "The Alchemist," it's in the prologue I think. I absolutely love the theme of selfish love and I think it's a big thing for him and something he comes to terms with in TSOA and the Iliad. There was more inspiration behind the selfish love bit too because I just adore it so much, if anyone's interested I can post it too.


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